LoneyBones Second Chance Scavenger Hunt...Everyone Welcome To Join In

[regross]

certainly explains the censu family I include in my earlier post

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Search/frameset_search.asp

especially as I also found this with a Louisa Enos :
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Search/frameset_search.asp

It also opens up a new way of looking at his ancestry. He may well have been portugese (think about his children's names they may contain a clue to his parentage)

Wonder if DNA research is of any help here?

Robyn

[regross]

Well

A bit more looking and I think that you may well ahve to be open to the fact that in portugese society, children could be given their mothers maiden name as a surname; see this: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Search/frameset_search.asp

Also other's form Azores by the name of John Innis came to Australia:
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Search/frameset_search.asp

This may complicate things a bit.

A post in threads: other countries and in European counries linking to this may be helpful too.

Robyn

[jaywit]

Have you thought about a possible connection to this?

http://wwwlibrary.csustan.edu/bsantos/whaling.html

[LoneyBones]

Jaywit, I already have whalers in my COOPER line....     I think somebody somewhere is trying to tell me something.     Spooky.
Robyn, unfortunately all those links are blank search forms.      They sound so interesting too.

[Ruskie]

As John himself was providing details of his own parents it seems very odd that on two of his three marriage certs, his parent's details were left blank.

Oddly enough I was going to ask if Constance was a middle name or surname. I suppose it is possible that he didn't know his mother's surname, specially if he wasn't close to his parents or his mother died when he was young. 

Peonie's finds are certainly very interesting, but I do wonder about that family talk of a Scottish connection.

It does seem like Innis may be closer to the original surname and it evolved to Ennis later .... 

[LoneyBones]

Ruskie, NZ certificates at that time didn't have any other details, nor did the early Australian ones. I think it wasn't 'til about 1860 that the Australian marriage certificates asked for parent's names.

I think we, as genealogists, are aware of our mothers' maiden names but a lot of people never ask.
I tried it out amongst some friends one day and half of them didn't know their mother's name before she married.

I'm only just getting into all the links here. They're very interesting. I think it's quite funny that we never even thought he might actually be Portuguese when so much points to that. I'm checking out some family photos, put a whole new light on them. 

[regross]

 Sorry about that  have just sent you a pm with the details

Robyn

[LoneyBones]

Thanks Robyn. 

[avm228]

I've been to Faial.  It's not the sort of place you'd conjure out of the air, so if he said he was born there he probably was!

It's quite a way from the Portuguese mainland (2.5 hours from Lisbon by plane in 2008).

There's almost no cultivable land (it's a windblown volcano in the middle of the Atlantic) and the only reasons I can imagine anybody with a Scottish surname being born there in 1831 would be if there was a connection with the whaling industry, or alternatively if the parents were passengers on a transatlantic ship which happened to dock there for restocking or shelter from an Atlantic storm.  Sailors still stop there for R&R mid-journey, and whales do still come by, though happily they now provide opportunities for whalewatching rather than slaughter.